BBC cries foul over lack of branding for its Apple News stories
The British Broadcasting Corporation has complained to a UK antitrust authority that Apple and Google's news services, such as Apple News, diminish its branding by downplaying where it gets its new stories.
Apple has now disabled news summaries after damaging inaccuracies were reported.
The new accusations come in the midst of an ongoing investigation by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over the two tech giants' dominance in web browser engines and smartphone operating systems. The new complaint from the BBC suggests that aggregate news services minimize credit for the providers of the news those programs feature.
Because the BBC gets its budget from a unique "licence fee" model, it depends on worldwide brand recognition and respect for its efforts to justify its funding. Its income derives in large part from a fee paid by everyone in the UK who has a TV or radio.
The licence fee currently costs every British household $225.65 per year, as of April 1, 2025. The BBC uses this funding to provide news and other programming available across various platforms, including worldwide online news reporting.
The corporation does also gain some income from outside licensing, advertising and other sources. However, the UK license fee still accounts for 68 percent of its total annual income.
The BBC is asking for the CMA to require Apple and Google to give more prominence to the sources of news stories it features in its news and podcast apps. While such a ruling would theoretically only apply to UK sources, the two tech giants would likely apply those regulations to all new sources.
Although the BBC is best known outside the UK for its news and entertainment TV programming, it also operates the World Service radio news network, and is a prominent source of news online. It is this latter service that the corporation worries isn't getting due credit for the content it provides to aggregators.
The BBC's unique funding and responsibilities
In its complaint to the CMA, the BBC said that "if audiences derive value from our content and services but attribute that value to gatekeepers instead of the BBC, then that undermines the perceived value of the BBC." The "gatekeepers" in this case are primarily Apple and Google, along and other news apps, podcast services, and websites that aggregate news stories.
The corporation says that the downplaying of where Apple and Google gets their news "weakens" the relationship between the BBC and the UK population that funds it, according to its CMA submission. It has suggested that more prominent logos of the sources in aggregate services could be a possible solution.
The broadcaster argued that the actions by Google and Apple to downplay the sources of its Apple News content threatens the funding that allows it to expand its reach in other mediums. While the BBC is arguing for its own branding, a positive ruling from the CMA would likely demand fair branding for all sources of news stories seen in Apple and Google's news apps and sites.
Apple has already run afoul of the BBC after it tried using its own AI engine to summarize UK news stories. The results often distorted or fabricated what the stories were actually about.
The BBC and others complained that the summaries were actively damaging their reputation for accuracy. Apple's initial fix for the issue was simply to brand when a summary had been AI-generated.
It has now disabled news and entertainment summaries by default. Users can still turn them on, but are notified that the feature is in beta, and that the summaries could be inaccurate.
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